COLONIES OF THE DANES IN AMERICA.

BUT besides the evidences that the Malay, Australasian and Polynesian tribes of the Pacific islands, have, in remote ages, peopled America, from the west; coming, first of all, from the Asiatic shores of that ocean; and also from the east, peopling the island Atalantis, (equally early, as we believe,) once situated between America and Europe, and from this to the continent; yet there is another class of antiquities, or race of population, which, says Dr. Mitchell, deserves particularly to be noticed. "These are the emi

grants from Lapland, Norway, and Finland; the remotest latitude north of Europe, "who, before the tenth century, settled themselves in Greenland, and passed over to Labrador. It is recorded that these adventurers settled themselves in a country which they called Vinland."

Our learned regent, Gov. De Witt Clinton, says Dr. Mitchell, who has out-done Governeur Colden, by writing the most full and able history of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, of New-York, mentioned to me his belief that a part of the old forts and other antiquities at Onondaga, about Auburn, and the adjacent country, were of Danish character.

"I was at once penetrated by the justice of his remark; an additional window of light was suddenly opened to my view on this subject. I perceived at once, with the Rev. Van Troil, that the European emigrants had passed, during the horrible commotions of the ninth and tenth century, to Iceland. See History of England.

The Rev. Mr. Crantz had informed me, in his important book, how they went to Greenland. I thought I could trace the people of Scandinavia to the banks of the St. Lawrence; I supposed my friends had seen the Punic inscriptions made by them here and there, in the places where they visited. Madoc, prince of Wales, and his Cambrian followers, appeared, to my recollection, among these bands of adventurers. And thus the northern lands of North America were visited by the hyperborean tribes from the northwestermost climates of Europe; and the northwestern climes of

North America had received inhabitants of the same race from the northeastern regions of Asia.

The Danes, Fins, or Germans, and Welchmen, performing their migrations gradually to the southwest, seem to have penetrated to the country situated in the south of Lake Ontario," which would be in the states of New-York and Pennsylvania, "and to have fortified themselves there; where the Tartars, or Samoieds, travelling, by slow degrees, from Alaska, on the Pacific, to the southeast, finally found them.

In their course, these Asian colonists probably exterminated the Malays, who had penetrated along the Chio and its streams, or drove them to caverns abounding in saltpetre and copperas, in Kentucky and Tennessee; where their bodies, accompanied with cloths and ornaments of their peculiar manufacture, have been repeatedly disinterred and examined by the members of the American Antiquarian Society.

Having achieved this cerquest, the Tartars and their descendants, had, probably, a much harder task to perform. This was to subdue the more ferocious and warlike European colonists, who had intrenched and fortified themselves in the country, after the arrival of the Tartars, or Indians, as they are now called, in the particular parts they had settled themselves in, along the region of the Atlantic.

In Pompey, Onondaga county, are the remains, or outlines, of a town, including more than five hundred acres. It appeared protected by three circular or elliptical forts, eight miles distant from each other; placed in such relative positions as to form a triangle round about the town, at those distances.

It is thought, from appearances, that this strong hold was stormed and taken on the line of the north side. In Camillus, in the same county, are the remains of two forts, one covering about three acres, on a very high hill; it had gateways, one opening to the east and the other to the west, toward a spring some rods from the works; its shape is elliptical; it has a wall, in some places ten feet high, with a deep ditch. Not far from this is another exactly like it only half as large. There are many of these ancient works hereabouts; one in Scipio, two near Auburn, three near Canandaigua, and several between the Seneca and Cayuga Lakes. A number of

such fortifications and burial places have also been discovered in Ridgeway, or the southern shore of Lake Ontario.

There is evidence enough that long and bloody wars were waged among the inhabitants, in which the Scandinavians, or Esquimaux, as they are now called, seem to have been overpowered and destroyed in New-York. The survivors of the defeat and ruin retreated to Labrador,”—a country lying between Hudson's bay and the Atlantic; in latitude 50 aud 60 degrees north, where they have remained secure from further pursuit.

From the known ferocity of the ancient Scandinavians, who with other Europeans of ancient times we suppose to be the authors of the vast works about the region of Onondaga, dreadful wars, with infinite butcheries, must have crimsoned every till and dale of this now happy country.

In corroboration of this opinion, we give the following, which is an extract from remarks made on the ancient customs ofthe Scandinavians, by Adam Clarke, in a volume entitled, "Clarke's Discovery," page 145.

1st Odin, or Woden, their supreme god, is there termed the terrible or severe deity; the father of slaughter, who carries desolation and fire; the tumultuous and roaring deity; the giver of courage and victory; he who marks out who shall perish in battle; the shedder of the blood of man, From him is the fourth day of our week, denominated Wodensday, or Wednesday.

2d. Frigga, or Frega: she was his consort, called also Ferorthe, mother Earth. She was the goddess of love and debauchery-the northern Venus. She was also a warrior, and divided the souls of the slain with her husband, Odin. From her we have our Friday, or Freya's day; as on that day she was peculiarly worshipped; as was Odin on Wednesday.

3d. Thor, the god of winds and tempests, thunder and lightning. He was the especial object of worship in Norway, Iceland, and consequently in the Zetland isles. From him we have the name of our fifth day, Thor's day or Thursday.

4th. Tri, the god who protects houses. His day of worship was called Tyrsdays, or Tiiesday, whence our Tuesday. As to our first and second day, Sunday and Monday, they derived their names from the Sun and the Moon, to whose worship ancient idolators had consecrated them."

From this we learn that they had a knowledge of a small cycle of time, called a week of seven days, and must have been derived, in some way, from the ancient Hebrew scriptures, as here we have the first intimation of this division of time. But among the Mexicans no trait of a cycle of seven days is found, says Humboldt; which we consider an additional evidence that the first people who found their way to these regions, called North and South America, left Asia at a period anterior at least to the time of Moses; which was full 1600 years before Christ.

But we continue the quotation: "All who die in battle go to Vallpalla, Odin's palace, where they amuse themselves by going through their martial exercises; then cutting each other to pieces; afterwards, all the parts healing, they sit down to their feasts, where they quaff beer out of the skulls of those whom they had slain in battle, and whose blood they had before drank out of the same skulls, when they had slain them.

The Scandinavians offered different kinds of sacrifices, but especially human; and from these they drew their auguries, by the velocity with which the blood flowed, when they cut their throats, and from the appearance of the intestines, and especially the heart. It was a custom in Denmark to offer annually, in January, a sacrifice of ninety-nine-cocks, ninety-nine dogs, ninety-nine horses, and ninety-nine men; besides other human sacrifices," on various occasions.

Such being the fact, it is fairly presumable that as the Danes, Scandinavians, and Lapponiac nations, found their way from the north of Europe to Iceland, Greenland and Labrador; and from thence about the regions of the western lakes, especially Ontario; that the terrific worship of the Celtic gods, has been practised in America, at least in the State of New-York. And it is not impossible but this custom may have pervaded the whole continent, for the name of one of these very gods, namely Odin, is found among the South Americans, and the tops of the pyramids may have been the altars of sacrifice.

"We have already fixed the attention of the reader," says Baron Humboldt," on Votan, or Wodan, an American, who seems to be a member of the same family with the Woads, or Odins, of the Goths, and nations of the Celtic origin."

The same names, he says, are celebrated in India, Scandinavia, and Mexico, all of which is, by tradition, believed to point to none other than to Noah and his sons. For, according to the traditions of the Mexicans, as collected by Bishop Francis Nunez de la Vega, their Wodan was grandson to that illustrious old man, who, at the time of the great deluge, was saved on a raft with his family. He was also at the building of the great edifice, and co-operated with the builder, which had been undertaken by men to reach the skies. The execution of this rash project was interrupted; each family receiving from that time a different language; when the Great Spirit, or Teall, ordered Wodan to go and people the country of Anahuac, which is in America.

"Think (says Dr. Mitchell) what a memorable spot is our Onondaga, where men of the Malay race, from the southwest, and of the Tartar blood from the northwest, and of the Gothic stock from the northeast, have successively contended for the supremacy and rule, and which may be considered as having been possessed by each long enough before" Columbus was born, or the navigating of the western ocean thought of.

"John De Let, a Flemish writer, says, that Madoc, one of the sons of Prince Owen Gynnith, being disgusted with the civil wars which broke out between his brothers, after the death of their father, fitted out several vessels, and having provided them with every thing necessary for a long voyage, went in quest of new lands to the westward of Ireland. There he discovered very fertile countries," where he settled; and it is very probable Onondaga, and the country along the St. Lawrence, and around Lakes Ontario and Erie, were the regions of their improvements.-Carver, p. 108.

"We learn from the historian Charlevoix, that the Eries, an indigenous nation of the Malay race, who formerly inhabited the lands south of Lake Erie, where the western district of Pennsylvania and the state of Ohio now are. And Lewis Evens, a former resident of the city of New-York, has shown us in his map of the Middle Colonies, that the hunting grounds of the Iroquois extended over that very region. The Iroquois were of the Tartar stock, and they converted the country of the exterminated Erics or Malays, into a range for the wild beasts of the west, and a region for their own hunters."